Feminist Visual Artist – Paintings, Mixed Media and Etchings

Mungo 2 – Final Stage

In the slide show I photographed defined stages of the composition in an almost monochrome image.

This was a painting that came together without too much pushing and pulling around of compositional elements. Because the textural elements influenced and constructed the form of the image I felt that colour should be minimal. I tried to depict various types of soil around the dark surface of the dried lake bed that consisted of clays hence the textured surface made from torn frottage taken from parts of the lake’s surface with compressed charcoal and oxide powder (now painted over) as well as grated earth coloured pastel mixed in gesso.

Ink in gesso formed the underpainting over which oil paint graded tones unified disparate pieces of paper (frottage) one of which contain the time and date of making the rubbed area illuminating the earth formation beneath the paper pressed over its surface.

I often find myself reversing the composition when I seem so sure that it’s the right way up and how i envisioned it in sketch form. Then somehow the oil paint medium, its capacity to flow, bleed, make random shapes as transparent and opaque edges meet. It’s at this moment that something else takes over and I have to put all pre-conceived ideas on to the side-lines but then later bring aspects of the original idea into the hopefully concise paint mark-making often with the addition of an oil paint stick. Always love line.

I have been producing oil paintings, mixed media, prints (etching), digital prints and drawings for many years travelling to the Australian outback and overseas for inspiration and further education.
My formal education consists of a PhD in painting and a BA in printmaking and my artwork is represented in public and private collections.
My purpose and ongoing challenge is to create a gender-balanced and environment-focused iconography within the Western canon of European oil painting.
These themes find expression within imagery about time, memory and identity as well as in geomorphology of evolutionary and environmental significance.